As computing environments have become more complex, to some, the divisions between processors and applications have become blurred. Additionally, the delineation between processors has become weak, for example with remote applications rendering locally. The blurring is further compounded by technologies such as virtual machines.
It is beneficial to establish useful states in a computing environment that are separate from an application-centric interface. However, placing the computing environment in a designated state should not require a user to change the state with each application in the computing environment. Instead, a global state change (across applications, virtual machines, and so forth) should be possible.
Another limitation of conventional user interfaces is that computing environment state information is not shared in an unobtrusive manner.